The Virginia G. Piper
Center for Creative Writing

Nick Estes is a citizen of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe. He is an Assistant Professor in the American Studies Department at the University of New Mexico. In 2014, he co-founded The Red Nation, an Indigenous resistance organization. For 2017-2018, Estes was the American Democracy Fellow at the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History at Harvard University. His research engages colonialism and global Indigenous histories, with a focus on decolonization, oral history, U.S.

Ayanna Thompson is a Professor of English at Arizona State University where she directs the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. 

 She is the author of many titles, including Shakespeare in the Theatre: Peter Sellars (Arden Bloomsbury, 2018), and Passing Strange: Shakespeare, Race, and Contemporary America (Oxford University Press, 2011). She wrote the new introduction for the revised Arden3 Othello (Arden, 2016), and is the editor of Colorblind Shakespeare: New Perspectives on Race and Performance (London and New York: Routledge, 2006).